By Norm Dixon
Millions of South Africans answered the ANC and SACP's call to peacefully mark April 14 as a day of mourning for Chris Hani. Despite the media's concentration on isolated but understandable outbursts of anger and despair, and murderous overreaction to them by the police, the commemoration meetings for the popular communist leader proved to be a massive show of support for the ANC-led tripartite alliance and its demand that progress towards democracy be accelerated.
"The people showed not only the depth of their feeling for Chris but also their depth of feeling for fundamental change in this country", Essop Pahad, speaking from the SACP's head office in Johannesburg, told Green Left Weekly on April 15.
Pahad, a member of the SACP's Central Committee, said that over 1.5 million people participated directly in 86 memorial meetings organised by the ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance throughout South Africa.
"We had practically a total shutdown in most of the major cities, and even in little towns like Potchesftroom, where I was yesterday, there was a demonstration of 10,000 people that marched from the township into the city centre."
It is estimated that more than 3 million workers stayed away from work, and several million more students joined the strike. A huge demonstration in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, was described in press reports as the largest ever ANC gathering in that city. 100,000 people gathered in Durban, also in Natal.
"There can be no doubt that millions and millions of our people are very, very angry at what has happened. In that respect the situation is tense. The most important thing is that the calls of the leadership of the alliance for our people to channel their anger in a disciplined way, to prevent a very chaotic and very destructive situation, has by and large been successful", Pahad said.
"The important task now is to do all we can to ensure that we move even more rapidly to a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa ... that would be the finest monument that we could build to Chris Hani."
Following days of press reports concentrating on "violence" in the aftermath of Hani's death, the Sydney Morning Herald's Ross Dunn finally conceded in an April 17 feature that "the day of national mourning for Mr Hani was in fact the most peaceful 'stayaway' of its kind in recent years".
What violence did occur was overwhelmingly the result of police attacks on the demonstrations. More than 26,000 police were deployed by the government to deal with the April 14 protests. Many parts of the country were declared "unrest areas", giving police powers equal of the states of emergency through the '80s. The ANC called the declarations a "calculated provocation".
At least nine people were killed by police in Cape Town and Soweto. In Soweto police fired on a demonstration at the Protea police station, killing at least three and injuring 240. Essop Pahad told Green Left that the police opened fire without warning and without provocation. He reported that one of those killed in was Sam Ntambane, the secretary of a Soweto branch of the ANC.
"He was also a very active member of our party; he was in the underground of our party and the ANC before we became legalised. He used to work for the National Union of Mineworkers, he was a wonderful trade unionist. We have lost another tremendous comrade."
Pahad dismissed media speculation that the murder of Hani would result in the defection of militant township youth from the ANC and SACP to the PAC because of its opposition to negotiations. The sheer size of the memorial meetings and the discipline of the vast majority of youth who attended prove this, he said.
"In all the demonstrations the youth formed a powerful contingent. All of us at those meetings put forward the position that what we want is an early election, that the negotiation process must be speeded up, and a Transitional Executive Council put in place. I can't think of anybody who said that there was objection to this political position from the people attending these marches and rallies.
"We have to use the power of the masses to compel this regime to concede to our demands relating to the negotiation process ... They killed Chris Hani because they wanted to derail that process. The tripartite alliance and other democratic forces in this country are not going to allow them to succeed."
The assassination and the police violence again show that control of the security forces will be a fundamental question for a democratic government, Pahad stressed. "We have been proposing to the regime that we must have multiparty control over all armed formations during the transitional period. The regime is still resisting that ...
"[After the transitional period] all state institutions, state structures, have to be reconstructed because they will remain the same the day after the election ... That remains for us one of the key elements to bringing about change in this country.
"The only force that we have is the power of the masses, and without the active involvement of the masses in the process we are considerably weakened. The other side holds all the reins of state power and uses it for their own purposes. Obviously, to achieve our goals we must mobilise the power of our masses."
The party has suffered a terrible loss, Pahad said, but it will not prevent the SACP continuing on the road to which Hani had dedicated his life. "Many of the qualities that Chris had are irreplaceable: his popularity, his charisma, his ability to get [the ideas of the Communist Party] through to millions of people. In that the party.
"But the political direction of the party is not going to change ... Chris was very much a part of the evolution of the policies of the party. Chris died just before we were going to have a national strategy conference at which we were going to discuss the way we see the party developing. We're going to have that conference towards the end of May, and the consequences of the loss of Chris will be a central part of our discussions.
"Our membership stands at 50,000. Our support is growing. One of the reasons they killed Chris is because the party is very popular. They have not realised that his murder is in fact going to make the party even stronger. There are going to be lots more people who are going to join the party as a result of this dastardly deed."